Fuck Yeah!
Is that the biggest upset ever? Giants 17 Patriots 14.
Untraceable
Untraceable is a thriller that tries to make a statement about our media obsession with junk. It tries to equate our fixation for torture porn and sick and disgusting websites with the depravity of a serial killer. It tries to make us, the audience, culpable for the rottenness of society. It doesn’t do it very well.
What it has going for it was Diane Lane. She’s still a hottie in my book, but this movie seems to be one were she’s just in it for the money. I think everyone in it was.
Diane Lane plays an FBI agent (does the fbi hire nothing but hotties) in the cyber crime department. She tracks down the miscreants who use the internet for illegal activities like credit theft and solicitation of minors. She is given a lead for a web site that is set up to deliver torture by the amount of people who view its pages. It starts with a kitten and ends up with several human victims. All for the people who view the site.
Needless to say the site was untraceable and hard to find the owner or where it was being broadcast from. Yet, they do find the perp. And save the day. The final shot is of the sites stats slowly dropping.
It’s not a very good film. Everything was telegraphed. Everything. “Here’s a present.” “Use morse code.” “I downloaded a video game from a friend.” You could spot that from a mile away.
2 of 5 stars.
Check Engine
It just came on.
Grr.
Adventures From My Netflix Queue: This is England
Toots and the Maytals’s 54-46 Was My Number opens the film, This is England, playing over news reel footage of the turmoil and strife of Britain in the 80s during Maggie Thatcher’s reign. And that song hooked me.
The film is a semi-autobiographical story from the writer and director, Shane Meadows. It’s about a young english lad, Shaun, growing up without a father who had just died in the Falkland War. His father is replaced by a band of skinheads who become a surrogate family for him. They make him a skinhead. They are not the kind of skinheads that we are used to today. Woody, the leader, is compassionate. He takes Shaun under his wing, shows him respect, shows others respect, and preaches unity for all in his clan. Of course this is broken up.
Combo, just released from the pen, shows up preaching National Front ideology. Quickly the movie devolves to showing the nazi punk skinheads. Shaun must choose between Combo or Woody, hate or compassion. He sides with Combo, but soon realizes the mistake. Yet, Combo, for all his hate has a side that realizes what he misses the most and why it has made him susceptible to National Front rhetoric. It goes back to the father figure. He missed out on it, and it makes him a bleak, void needing something to fill it up.
So was Shaun. Woody tried to guide him away from Combo’s ways, but he had to find out for himself what depths Combo would sink to. That means being caught up in a horrendous beat down of an immigrant fellow skinhead/rude boy, Milky, who had expressed the truth to both Shaun and Combo of the good of a father figure.
While not expressly awesome as a film, I found that I liked it. The soundtrack I want to get. Including that Toots song it had some other ska that’s fun to hear. The young actor playing Shaun, Thomas Turgoose, gives a decent performance in a first role. But it is Joseph Gilgun as Woody as the kind hearted skinhead and Stephen Graham’s, frightening but sad, Combo, that makes it.
An early scene in the film has Shaun playing on the beach. Of course, as a coming of age movie, I thought that the film should end with him on the beach, looking into the camera a la Antoine Doniel. Damned if it didn’t end up like that.
One thing, I couldn’t find the English subtitles on the disc. Their English accents are tough to make out. I think I have to see this again to fully understand what they’re saying.
4 of 5 stars
Cycle Lift
Sometimes on my bike I wish I had this cycle lift to help me up hills. That’s fucking cool. Of course you find these in a city in Europe. Us Americans don’t need that. We have cars.
Swede!!
In a comment on marge’s blog and also in my review, I predicted that someone was going to insert their own selves into the action going on in Cloverfield and by doing, would make a more enjoyable film (at least for me).
They would take the conceit of the movie and recreate it for themselves and their friends. It will go on YouTube and people will judge it as its own creation.
They’ll swede it.
Hunh?
It’s the concept of filming an already released movie in your own interpretation with whatever you have on hand. That don’t sound right.
Just visit the site for Michel Gondry’s upcoming flick Be Kind Rewind and you’ll get the gist of Sweding. Once their compare this sweding with the original (click the original first!!).
I laughed at the original and I can’t wait to see this.
Cycling in Copenhagen
When theSeed, CapitolSwell and I were on the infamous cruise of 2001, the first city was Copenhagen, Denmark. One of the first things I noticed about that place was the amount of cyclists on the road. I was surprised to see dedicated bike lanes for them. Later on I find out that Copenhagen is one of the more cycling friendly of world cities.Here's a blog about the cycling culture there: http://cycleliciousness.blogspot.com/.Here's another about the girls over there cycling: http://copenhagengirlsonbikes.blogspot.com/.I'm so envious. What a way to commute! It's probably much better going on a bike to any activity that involves a car. Going to the cine on a bike. Going to a pub. Drunken biking afterwards. Tooling around the city shopping. Then drinking some café au laits. Even in the winter it sounds like fun.I've got to get on my bicycle soon.
January Miscellaneous
First homework assignment for CS712 Web Application Development with Java Servlets and Java server pages. This is interactive for anyone and everyone to test. Or maybe not depending upon the traffic the server at school gets. I wonder if they’ll shut it down?
Tour de Cure on June 7, 2008 around Columbia/Sykesville. Is it hilly there?
Kona Paddy Wagon is coming up soon. I got to get me a single speed for tooling around the NCR.
BBC Cue Sheet Library take a look at some of the rides in Baltimore County. The ones going from Franklin are intriguing.
Ono Coffee is a stranger in a strange land. Eating, drinking, being merry.
The one Barbara Stanwyck film I am dieing to see. It’s also a Preston Sturges penned film. How come TCM didn’t show it this year? Here’s where you can catch the trailer?
My own album
CD Cover Memes Pool on Flickr is pretty cool. I like it, but it’s tough to get a picture to use. Check the creative commons stuff.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.2. www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.3. www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.4. ???
5. Profit
Try this link to get a usable flick via the creative commons license.
Cloverfield
I don’t know if the hype of Cloverfield turned me against it right from the start or if it’s just something I don’t like. I do know that it made me sick. Even forewarned and sitting two rows from the back, I got a headache watching it. I wasn’t nauseous but maybe should’ve been. The shaky-cam effect meant to put us there but also made me sick.
The movie is a purported tape from some guys camera documenting his going away party and the monster attack on New York City. It’s a home video and like your typical home video, you want to forward to the good parts. The establishing scenes at the party and at the dude’s apartment I wish I could’ve fast forwarded through. Then when the monster attack was unleashed, I wish I could’ve fast forwarded through them as well.
The monster was the big secret in selling the movie. What was it? What does it look like? Under my headache when it showed up, I was underwhelmed. At first it was Cthulu. Then it was Dr. Zoidberg. Finally, in all it’s glory in the money shot of the movie, it was those landstriders from The Dark Crystal. Admittedly, I was nursing my headache so I might be wrong in my descriptions.
Anyway, all through Cloverfield I found it similar to the Korean monster film, The Host. I wasn’t fond of that film as well.
I think that when they do Cloverfield 2, it should be from the perspective of the army. And it should be a conventional film. That way we can find out what happened in the end. Also, I predict that a film will show up on youtube splicing some random dudes into the action. It would look just as real and perhaps be an even better story.
2 of 5 stars.